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2023-09-01 Science & Technology

Ballooning Ambitions - ‘His Majesty's Airship The R101, Life and Tragic Death of the World's Largest Flying Machine'

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Posted by Besoeker 2023-09-01 06:20|| || Front Page|| [15 views ] Top

#1 I wrote about the great airship development in 2006, when the wreck of the US airship Macon was discovered off the coast of California.
Sky Sisters.https://ncobrief.com/index.php/archives/sky-sisters/
Thespectacular loss of the Hindenburg, two years after the crash of the Macon, only added to public misgivings, although the argument has been made that the great airships were doomed, by increasing competition from commercial airplane services and the coming of a new war, where conventional air craft would be of far more use. But the fairly constant series of spectacular airship disasters probably darkened the public and the political view, too. In the long run, airplanes may have been as much at a hazard, the development of air services just as rocky, and the cumulative casualties just as many. But there was enormous prestige placed in those few great dirigible projects, and great expectations by the public made the various disasters all the more public and crushing.

Posted by Sgt. Mom 2023-09-01 08:44|| 2023-09-01 08:44|| Front Page Top

#2 ...A little more background:

There were two airships - R100, which was a privately built ship, and R101, built under the direct design and control of the Air Ministry. 100 pretty much sailed through construction, not without issues but mostly on time and under budget. 101, however, was an overweight and structurally iffy mess.

100 flew first - spectacularly to Canada and back - badly embarrassing the 101 team, which now felt compelled to make a flight to India. That flight ended in a French wood after just a few hours with a crash that killed all but twelve of the fifty-six people aboard.

That ended the British rigid airship program. 100 was never even allowed to fly again and was quietly scrapped a few years later. The British government had her dismantled, the framework run over with steamrollers, then sold.

Mike

Mike

Posted by MikeKozlowski 2023-09-01 08:49|| 2023-09-01 08:49|| Front Page Top

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